Friday, January 05, 2007

These are pics of Neil and Kara from a few years ago. Neil titled them 'high ropes'. Has anyone noticed but me that his pics tend towards the death defying? Hello. You can't tell in this pic that Neil is cute, but trust me his.

Egad, that was quite a day. Shouldn't life get easier, at least slightly? Stop this world I gotta get off. And I need protection from myself. How I managed to live this long I'll never know; pure, unadulterated luck. Today was more or less typical, although maybe a little worse. It didn't start out too good. I always measure out the coffee, pour water into the percolator and then push the start button just before I step into the shower. Unfortunately I didn't put the coffee pot under the spout. Thank good gawd I have a small coffee maker so it wasn't a terrible mess when I returned from the shower. At least I had something to do (clean up) while waiting for the next pot of coffee to finish percolating. Boy that's not a good way to start a day. I was skittish for the rest of the day, in fact my nerves were shot.

And the day didn't improve after that. The other big lowlight of the day was having two of those young men dressed in suits get on my subway car on the way home and one of them sitting next to me and asking me if I've seen the light: 'the whom?' 'the light that will shine on you if you take the right path' 'the only light I see is the one at the end of the tunnel and that is pretty dim at the moment' 'aha sir, well you can be saved' 'from what?' 'hell' 'I'm in hell right now, I'm talking to you and could you possibly just try to save someone else's soul today, I'm just not really in the mood, meet me here this upcoming Monday morning and we'll discuss Hell in detail' 'thank you sir, it's been nice talking to you sir, be well sir (they are polite)' 'thank you'.

The only small highlight of the day was talking to a woman in Vancouver: 'sorry Don I don't have time to talk to you, I'm doing year-end and it's snowing' 'you are in Vancouver it can't be snowing' 'what's the temperature in Toronto, ten above?' 'thirteen' 'what's going on Don, is the world coming to end?' "no, relax it's just evens out once in a while, Toronto always suffers, year after year, but this year Vancouver is suffering, remember the ice storm we had a couple of years ago?' 'but we've been hit bad this year Don, the trees in Stanley Park are flattened, I haven't been able to bike for weeks on end and my crocuses are wiped out' 'I'm in deep in sympathy, take care and I'll get back to you in a month or two'. Weather bonded two Canadians together for a few moments who were geographically far apart. I talk to persons every day, all day on the phone and it is amazing to me how much Canadians love this country, from coast-to-coast. It can be very subtle, or not. Of course during the World Cup soccer which is held every four years, it's obvious that all people love their country but Canadians, it seems to me, are more subtle but yet more compassionate in a way that others don't get.

We are completely unique, we have a lot of land and not so many people. We are the second largest country in the world after Russia by area, and the 36th largest by population. Russia has 142 million people, we have 33 million. Wherever we are in Canada, we should be pleased, from the mountains of B.C. to the prairies of Saskatchewan to the Canadian Shield and the Niagara Region of Ontario. From the Gatineau region of Quebec to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Think about it.

I don't know where that came from, but if one hasn't seen it, one should. It's an amazing country, to me at least.